


Ostinato

by psalloacappella



Series: Equilibrium [18]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Closets, Complicated Relationships, Deception, Drama, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Lime, Minor Canonical Character(s), Multi, Obsession, Shinobi Politics (Naruto)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23597845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psalloacappella/pseuds/psalloacappella
Summary: Departing in mutual weakness, culminating in the end of the world, and returning to a hurricane. Always in the eye of her, some complicated but honest peace.❦Sasuke and Naruto blow off steam. Sakura gets what she wants. Strangers come to visit.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke, Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto
Series: Equilibrium [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/46843
Comments: 10
Kudos: 68





	Ostinato

Equilibrium  
(18)

_You keep me lovely, unfettered, cold  
Running me down, as young and old  
and all sides of us are snares  
and all lines of us are poured with gold_

He stumbles back, sweeping his fingers across his mouth. Stares at the blood on them like it’s a puzzle, confusing. A stranger.

They’re frozen: Naruto has his hand outstretched and mouth hovering open, some odd and silent scream, though words don’t sound. An expression of apology and the tension blossoming in the moment from what he’s done, unsure of how it will be received.

He hasn’t made him bleed in a while.

Sai stays on the sideline, expression hard and limbs unmoving but with an arm bent back, fingers resting on the handle of his sheathed tanto.

Sasuke meets Sai’s eyes, and a laugh bubbles up from somewhere murky, abyssal. It climbs like music notes, discordant. Ugly song. Sai’s expression gleams with something like apprehension, and he shakes his flyaway hair away from his eyes to stare back.

Sasuke passes the back of his hand over his mouth, streaks still coming away red. His smirk settles in; wants to tell Sai to back off, not to look at him like he’s insane, _the audacity._

To Naruto: “Close your mouth. You look dumb.” And it feels like trying on clothing that doesn’t fit, stretching unfamiliar skin over his bones, but he forces the closest thing he can to a smile.

Because god does it feel good to fight. Maybe not good to be alive, but at least to feel something like it.

Straightening, Sasuke spits a glob onto the ground, saliva and blood. The taste of an old friend, metallic and sanguine. Tangs and snaps at the tip of his tongue.

“You don’t need to be here,” Sasuke says to Sai, lifting his chin in his rude, lofty way.

“We’re fine,” Naruto adds, breaking his silence. An energy saturates him, adrenaline swelling, cresting, flooding into his limbs and muscles to produce shudders and shakes, mimicking the excitement of the man across from him in a feral form. “We do this a lot.”

“That was a tap.” Sasuke commands attention back to him with a snarl. Wants his eyes on him so he can have a fair go-around. “I’m not hurt.”

Naruto’s gaze settles on Sasuke’s: His clear blue eyes sparkling, never flinching as they ping between one blood-red and one deep purple, watching and waiting for a flicker of movement or jutsu or—

_Slam._

It always happens so fucking, infuriatingly fast, and Naruto laughs to himself as he feels hot liquid stream from his nose, into his mouth. Staining his teeth. He swings a forearm across him to block a flurry of punches, but loses ground, feels himself pressed backward, small step over step as his mind catches up to fight.

In the past he’d swing wildly, always narrowly missing the connection of fists and faces and ribs and organs, considerably outclassed. Still, as he folds at the waist into the ghost of a backbend, feeling the edge of Sasuke’s fist ruffle the air above him, he knows he’s going to love and loathe a best friend back at his fighting weight, at his zenith. Maybe it’s always going to sting a little. But if he’s honest and true, he loves these scraps with something akin to obsession, and that’s one wavelength on which he and Sasuke can always relate.

 _There._ In the opening Naruto spies, his elbow connects with Sasuke’s face; except it glances off and he doesn’t know how except there’s fingers tangled up in his jacket and another twisting his arm. His feet leave the ground.

Naruto writhes and twists, slashing back at him with a kunai knife and releasing himself from the grip, landing ugly in the dust. Up, up on his feet to greet his friend again, and they fall into a comfortable exchange of blows, knuckles glancing off one another or, alternatively, connecting in rough punches as they settle in for the long haul, the lap of endurance so they can get to what they came for – beating each other black and blue.

Sai watches, eyes catching the edge of one move bleeding into the next in a sweeping blur. Flashes of color, blond and black and blue and red. Beyond speed, impossible to capture with the human eye, existing in a dimension and space that only includes them, one side of the triangle of the team that’s already gaining a dangerous notoriety in regions and places of which they can’t conceive.

The glint of a knife, or a shuriken, or the sun angling across a chakra string just right – they’re reaching an apex. A scream, an animal one, and he isn’t able to tell from who. He’s adjudicated several of these scraps in the past week, the beginning of which was marked by Sasuke being permitted to train again. So they’ve embraced it with gusto, in competition from dawn to dusk in every nonsensical way possible. It must burn out eventually, but it’s fascinating to watch them tangle with the people they are, the people they were, the legend they’re becoming and how oblivious they are to it.

All of the conventions of shinobi that exist are broken by them. All three are emotionally enmeshed, entangled, headstrong, and unapologetic for all of it.

They land on the ground, force rebounding on them both and leaving them facedown in the dirt. For a beat, neither stirs. Sai sighs and tsk-tsks at the blood, knives. Now they’re muttering, trading cheap shots and dragging their third teammate into the conversation, invoking her name with the emotional maturity of academy children.

“You’re so lucky,” Naruto pants, “no one scooped her up while you were gone. You dumbass.”

Sasuke only retorts with a spectacular, spitting, “Fuck off.”

Both struggle to their feet, in good form but missing the edge from daily practice. They grimace about it; it shows. Still, the marked improvement in a week makes Sai wonder, for the millionth time, if any of the members of Team Seven are human.

“You didn’t tell me how she broke your nose.” Naruto’s tossing curiosities out now, half wanting to know the truth and half-hoping to catch him off guard.

“Did I stutter? Fuck. Off.”

“You’d think,” he begins again, rubbing his hair out of his face, “with all the time you spend with her,” Naruto continues, rushing headlong into stupid territory, “that you’d be in a better mood—ey!” He dodges Sasuke’s angry fist, and clamps him around the shoulders with one arm to counter by sinking a knee into his gut.

Eyes sparkling, he sinks into a close embrace for a brief moment, smashing his forehead against Sasuke’s; a crack shot sound erupts, bone on bone. In the intervening breaths between impact and the assured riposte, takes a moment to lean in even closer, still with his arm trapping Sasuke, so he can reach the corner of his own mouth, wiping away spittle and blood with his knuckles.

Sai can feel it in the air, see it in the way Sasuke’s eyes flash and reveal some sliver of darkness and fury, and he knows it’s about to end.

The way he’s silent, more a whisper of wind and a crackle in the air, moving through Naruto rather than colliding with him, reveals his channeled focus. The hits are swift and swirling, both taken right in his face.

Naruto’s no stranger to unhappy and deadly accidents, whether being clobbered by his favorite female teammate, a temperamental skirmish with friends, or the myriad near-death situations in which he tends to find himself. Particularly, he’s used to impulsivity and the reckless thrashing and people just giving him the angry answer straight on the chin.

Washes over him in a soft, couched throb, a pulse, singular and then pattering off into a thousand heartbeats that melt into some frenzied, uncontrollable thing. Endless, tumbling, lost in some atmospheric, removed plane of existence. Then, the sparkles begin.

He knows they were pulled back, a fraction of the damage the man’s capable of. Despite himself, Naruto smiles as electricity sweeps through his muscles and marrow lightly, almost like it taps them and fades away, a sonorant touch and go. The sound of chirping, no needles or stabs; instead it feels like the hint of a threat, as far as he dares to go. After all, they’re on the same team again, carrying one another’s faults and hearts.

If he breathes — if he moves, it will stop everything in an instant. Heart, air, muscles, lungs. It will tango and cavort with the neurons in his brain and leave him shattered. Those descriptions, those flowery words aren’t his, he knows; it’s the grim, grey shadow of his best friend pressing a divining imprint into his thick skull.

If this is anything like what Sakura feels around the man, this tension, well, Naruto can’t fault her for never quite loving him back, for failing to turn her head to him despite his pining.

Maybe he’s always understood the craving.

And Naruto groans as he feels the cold metal _tap, tap_ him under the chin, an admonition, held up against the tree trunk only by his shaking knees and the knife so close to his larynx.

Sasuke’s smile is more of a smirk, but still with a bite: “You talk too much.”

❦

The motley crew emerges onto the street, feeling conspicuous. Sai and Naruto keep up a steady stream of bickering as they head deeper into town, while the wrecked, bloody look of two of them attracts overt and open stares. Sasuke trails behind, his expression sliding over civilians and shopkeepers, still alert for the elusive, trained shinobi weaving themselves into the village fabric. While he understands the usefulness of a veneer of obedience, he’s not quite sure he’ll stop himself the next time he runs into one of them.

This isn’t meeting his expectations. Everything immediately afterward fell into place, felt easy. Even amidst funerals and death and prison it had a linear direction. Now it feels chaotic, unsettling, with the feeling of being unmoored.

“You dicks keep waltzing through the village all bloody. Do you want people to look at you?”

“Sakura-chan said if we were going to fight like this, she wants us to get checked out.”

“Seems like you want attention.”

“Listen,” Naruto says, waving a clenched, bloody fist at him, “if you want to fight too, all you need to do is ask. I’ll stomp you.”

“Don’t you get sick of fighting? Didn’t we just stop a war?”

“No excuse for not training!”

Sasuke tunes out the squabbling again, and brings his fingers to his nose. Not broken, but tender. Head throbbing from his latest foray. He’s not quite sure why Sakura makes sure they get help from her each time, why she insists on helping them clean up after the messes they make. Always has. Surely she’s – no, he knows she’s busy with other things, fussing and worrying and furtive. Sometimes it seems to be an excuse to check on them, to be close to them, keeping tabs on both of their physical oddities so she isn’t caught unawares when the other sandal drops.

Waiting for the fall.

A movement up the street and to the right snags his gaze. Recognizes Kakashi, Lee, and Gai all gathered outside a particular establishment. Dingy in the daytime, downright malevolent and a haven for drunks and miscreants at night. Their presence seems accidental, as if they stumbled upon something that warrants a second look, but they’re in animated conversation. Well, as ardently as Kakashi ever gets, which means his eye is a little less lazy and a bit more alert, watching up and down the street, every now and then glancing at a woman in a worn, torn dress who lingers near the entrance.

Feeling like they’re about to be involved in something, his voice is urgent as he nudges Naruto. “Hey.”

Naruto looks at him over his shoulder, confused.

“Hey, you all, over here!”

They all see Lee jumping up and down, waving. Sasuke frowns, pulling back, but Sai raises an eyebrow at him. “They’ve already seen you.”

Sighing, he drags his feet behind Naruto, who bounds up to them and grins. “Kakashi-sensei!” Turns, gives a thumbs up to the other two. “You guys!”

Sai dips his head in greeting. Sasuke nods once.

“Nice to – see you three.” Kakashi’s surprise is only conveyed in the tiny hitch interrupting his sentence, and his eye roves over them, taking in the blood, the tears in their clothes. “Training again, I see.”

“Hmm, if you call it that,” Sai mutters, inspecting his fingernails.

“Nice to see you’re back to training and getting your body back into impeccable shape, Sasuke-san!” Lee says this at a volume defying polite conversational maxims, and thrusts out a hand for him to shake, teeth blindingly white and twinkling. Not unlike the blazing rays of the sun, Sasuke blinks in the face of it. Shrugging a shoulder, he shows his hand to Lee, presumably to indicate it’s covered in dried blood and cuts.

Lee grasps it anyway, shaking it in a manner obsessive and furiously polite. Sasuke’s expression doesn’t change except the fleeting twitch of his eyebrow and lip. His eyes ping to Kakashi, who still has his eyes on this unremarkable, odd woman loitering outside the establishment. Standing near one of the market tables outside, the surface laden with vases and glass of varying shapes and sizes. Her fingers are winding and unraveling around the fabric of her scarf, a nervous tic, eyes also watching the street.

Gai leans forward. Even sitting in a chair, he’s a beast of a man, and massive hands fall on Sasuke and Naruto’s shoulders. “And more importantly, it’s great to see your friendship blossom once again.”

Kakashi chuckles as his students both pull the same expression, a nauseated grimace. Slight blushes crop up in their faces, and Sasuke shrugs the touch away in irritation.

“What are you all waiting for?” Naruto asks, looking around. “Why are you _here?_ That place is rough, apparently.”

Kakashi looks at him. “How would you know that?”

“Kakashi-sensei, I know some things, okay.” Folding his arms, he puts his chin in the crook of his thumb and first finger. Winks. “I’ve been around.”

“Sakura told you,” Sai says. Fingers tapping on the handle of his tantō again.

Sasuke snorts. Kakashi feels warm at the sound, at the normal, human reaction.

“It’s a well-known place for people who crawl in the underbelly. Dealers, traffickers, black-market medicine. Prostitutes.”

Sai says the last word in a crisp tone, watching the woman with the scarf.

Several things happen in rapid succession: A scream rents the air, tearing out a painstaking rift. Glass shatters over and over in a round robin, cascading sounds as the table upends and the curator’s furious bellows erupt over it. Civilians taken aback, stopping in the streets and staring at the scene, at the man yanking the woman by her coat and shaking her, a ragdoll, and two men with sweeping long jackets turning on their heels and attempting to turn away from the seedy bar. Except they turn and collide with Lee at the last second in which he appears to block their path, and the owner of the market stall is sputtering as the tips of his toes scrape in the dust to gain leverage, to stem the pain of being hoisted up by his lapels by a smiling Kakashi.

The second ends when the woman’s scarf hits the dust.

Naruto blinks, looking in surprise from Kakashi to Lee, while Sasuke inhales deep in an attempt to dilute the adrenaline waltzing in his blood and nerves, unclenching a fist he doesn’t remember curling.

“Lee, leave it.” Kakashi’s words are commanding, and it’s something Sasuke notices he’s never lost, the firm tone that leads when needed. “We have nothing on them.”

“But, argh!” Lee sighs as the two men disappear, leaving no trace. Clapping his hands together, ridding them of their filthy touch, he watches Kakashi, who’s still affably choking the glass curator.

“She tipped my table – broke all my shit!”

“Right, but you don’t need to grab a lady like that,” Kakashi responds, rocking him a little by his collar. “I’m sure it was an accident.”

Turning to her, he waits for her answer. Face ashen, eyes wide like saucers, her eyes pass over every person in the vicinity, including Sasuke and Naruto.

Sasuke thinks he might be crazy, but they linger just a second too long on him and his teammate before moving on.

She nods to Kakashi, who opens his hands and drops the man on the ground, into the dust, without care. “Excellent. I’m sure they’ll be no more trouble.”

But when he turns away from them, and the woman bends down to snatch the scarf off the ground, the shadows that cross her countenance are sinister, so much so that Naruto leans in closer to him and whispers, “She was looking at us, wasn’t she?” He almost wants to deny it, feeling it must be some odd, errant blip in the universe until Kakashi is in front of them, and they stand in a circle. The woman casts one last over the street and disappears inside the building.

“That,” Kakashi says, voice heavy with an unknown weight, “was no accident.”

“Then why did you—?”

“A warning,” Sasuke interrupts, cutting across Naruto’s question. “A signal. Those men.”

“This isn’t something we should discuss in the open. We were observing only. Ah, this didn’t go how we planned.” Kakashi sighs again.

“Well, does anything?” Gai laughs. Alighting on a thought, he reaches across the circle and tries to clap Sasuke on the shoulder a second time; he shrugs out of his reach, lips thin. “Like you! You smooth operator. We’ve heard.”

“No.” Sasuke’s denial of the subject is abrupt and merciless. “Naruto, we’re going.”

Kakashi frowns at them. “You two are both capable of healing on your own. Does it ever occur to you that she has work to do?”

“Now, Kakashi, perhaps he’s lovelorn. Pining, you know.” Gai tsk-tsk’s, shaking his head at them. “You go get her! Take your best friend with you to help you in your endeavors.”

Sasuke’s already walking away, Naruto waving over his shoulder and hurrying to keep up.

“You should have killed me, that time.”

“Don’t make jokes like that,” Naruto says. His expression as he watches Gai’s excited thumbs up at their retreating backs, along with Lee’s crestfallen eyes, is nauseated.

“I’m not.”

❦

When Naruto and Sasuke drag their tired, battered bodies into the front entrance of the hospital, they’re intrigued at the lack of patients in the waiting room. Something taps on the inside of Sasuke’s mind, a fastidious detail mentioned in passing that he’s misplaced. Naruto, meanwhile, waves off the receptionist’s weak protests and flashes her a dazzling smile. She straightens her white hat and pouts, going back to her work; it’s obviously a routine and futile action to try to manage them.

Down hallways and corridors all clean and smelling of crisp antiseptic, footfalls sounding in the unusual hush. Perhaps there’s a practicum or seminar or other reason there seems to be nobody in the entire building. Sasuke’s expression is pensive, flipping through the figurative file catalogue of the tiny details he’s organized of all the things Sakura tells him in a day, which could be a million words or observations.

“There they are,” Naruto says, bringing Sasuke back to reality. They’ve just rounded a corner and at the far end of the corridor stands a group of people, Sakura’s vivid pink hair among them; also Ino’s long blonde ponytail, pulled high and tight on her head, a physical manifestation of the tension in the air. By the way they hold themselves, tall and preening and light little laughs behind gentle hands that seem agreeable and mild, touches on the forearm and the ornamentation of the men’s clothing, it’s like they’re entertaining at an event. Sasuke’s teeth are on edge at the sound of her low, careful voice and the fingers on the lord’s forearm and—

Ino’s eyes are on them and widen; the mingled panic and fury in her gaze reaches out and strangles them. Touching both Sakura and the man she’s likely been tasked to manage, she points in the opposite direction and whispers in her friend’s ear, briefing her before shooing them away.

Pivoting on her heel, the click-clacks of her shoes are ominous and threatening as she points a rigid finger at them and then jabs it to their right, indicating they go back around the corner.

“She looks pretty. Pretty mad. Mad. I mean, really mad.” Naruto’s babble as his head twists into knots is embarrassing, and Sasuke slinks around the corner with him, waiting for the explosion.

“Are you guys completely stupid?” Ino sputters, hands on her hips. Naruto’s distracted gaze falls somewhere on her dress, which is unfamiliar and not her hospital gear or her mission clothes or any one of the things they’ve ever seen her in.

“No? We’re just looking for Sakura-chan.”

“You picked today to beat each other up and then waltz in here looking like shit? Those men traveled a long way and they’re here seeing the hospital and talking business. Money. Do you have _any,_ ” and here she jabs a finger into Naruto’s sternum, pulling his focus to her face instead of her hips, “idea how _any_ of this works? You too, I expected better, Sasuke-kun, I’m sure she told you. Or were you too busy with your tongue down her—”

“Whoa, Ino.” Naruto puts up his hands, palms out. “First of all, yes, he was, ‘cause he’s a bastard. Second, your dress is really nice.”

“Yes, I know it is, and don’t interrupt me again. We’ve got to show around these ugly, old dudes and explain all of the awesome medical stuff we do and flutter our eyelashes and all that, and then let Tsunade convince them to invest and do business and whatever. Sakura’s working too; in fact, her brains are useful for this.”

She folds her arms, letting out an angry puff of air. Turning abruptly again, she motions for them to follow her.

“I’ll throw you in her office. Do not leave it. She’ll come help you when she’s done closing the deal.”

Opening the door, rolls her eyes as they cross the threshold. Naruto rubs his sternum with his fist and winces, and jumps as she slams the door behind them.

“Yeesh,” he says. “It must be important if she’s so cranky.”

Sasuke ignores him, looking out the window at the soft afternoon light. Sun approaching the horizon line and the light muted, wavering at the converging point of anticipated touch. Feeling a wave of exhaustion, he closes his eyes while the scents of her office sink in around him, plush – parchment paper intertwining with faint antiseptic and unidentified earthiness. And trickling in the back of his mind is the feeling he cannot shake, that the woman they saw was a plant and she tipped off those men, the actions and sad, worn, pathetic look all an act. The layers of deception. Stringing together logical possibilities in his mind as he lets the pain finally sink into his bones, thinking about how a shower would be a gift.

Sakura swings open the door, shuts it behind her and faces them. Sags against it and releases a long exhale, eyes falling closed and knees bending in just so slightly. It’s this Sasuke notices first, before the weaning afternoon light glitters off her earrings, visible with her hair swept off her neck and into a bun that likely started the day tight and business-like, now loose and springing free pink tendrils.

White coat. Red dress.

“Sakura-chan!”

Opens her eyes. “Ino told me you guys – oh, you look terrible.”

“Well, you don’t!”

Smiling briefly, she waves away the compliment. “This business stuff is exhausting. People like that are snobby, always so needy.”

“What’s on your face?”

Pulling a face at Naruto’s charm, she obliges. “Makeup. Ino did all this. She’s right that it works, though. Sasuke-kun, are you in pain?”

Sasuke realizes he’s been frowning, and shakes his head to clear the image of her and the men and the odd woman out of his mind; he’s tired enough that it all starts overlapping, grey and lined images transposed over one another. But what he’s desperate to push away are the thoughts he’s having about her dress, the hem rich and red against her pale thighs, the hooded look in her eyes of which he can’t discern the source, exhaustion or cosmetic or the way she’s watching him. Even still, he can’t always tell.

The way her eyes hold his, edged and green. Top teeth skirting her bottom lip so quickly it would be lost in an ill-timed blink.

A sound brings him back. She flips the lock on her door and crosses the room, fiddling with the latch on the window. Squinting in the late afternoon sun.

“Figure out which one of you goes first,” she instructs, throwing open the window. Construction sounds filter in, hammers on nails overlapping with saws pressing through wood and the high, scratchy clicks of bricks on bricks.

“Ahh, me!” Naruto beams as Sakura begins to tap him here and there, running practiced fingers over his face and arm, lifting it to check his ribs underneath. Sasuke narrows his eyes.

“Anything exciting happen today? Besides training, obviously.”

Naruto recounts how he definitely almost beat Sasuke, and then launches into the situation they ran into at the outskirts of town. Sakura frowns, a tiny divot appearing between her brows as she listens.

“A signal, obviously. Maybe,” she says, alighting on an idea, “the scarf was the original idea. To drop it. But the situation got too close, with Kakashi-sensei and everyone there. She had to warn them in a more obvious way, or maybe even distract them. So she breaks the glass.”

Sasuke’s quiet, musing. Then: “They’re meeting there.”

When they look at him, he continues. “It’s a hideout. Meeting location. She scared them away from it. Might even be a burned location now.”

Sakura nods, agreeing.

“Sakura-chan, why did you open the window? It’s hard to hear with all the noise.”

“That’s why I did it.” She lowers her voice an octave as she continues. “I don’t trust that people aren’t eavesdropping. Especially with these feudal lords and unfamiliar representatives here. You’re done, by the way.”

Sasuke jumps as her hand touches his face, gingerly running fingers over his nose and cheek. “Also, you need to go find Hinata.”

Naruto begins to blush. “Ah, why?”

“Because you’re avoiding her, and she asked for you earlier.” Gives him a sharp look before turning her attention back to Sasuke. “So go on.”

“Fine.” He crosses the room and flips the lock, but not before giving Sasuke a devious, sly smirk. “See you two at dinner?”

“See you at dinner,” she responds, still staring at Sasuke.

It’s only when the door clicks shut that all these idiotic and jealous questions spring into his mind, unbidden, twisting around one another in anger. Not sure what to ask first, or if staying silent is best as she runs her hands down his arms, redirects attention to his chest and ribs and already the heat rises beneath her hands. Everywhere she touches, he springs to life, like warming up from the bone-cold rain.

He reaches out.

Hand cups her face, thumb resting on her bottom lip, fingers splayed across her cheek.

“Who were they?” His voice comes out hoarse, scratchy.

“Important men. Like I said. They like pretty women to show them around. That’s just how it goes, Sasuke-kun.”

He doesn’t remove his hand. Her lips form words against the pad of his thumb.

“It’s a game,” she sighs. “They’re assessing what power and resources we have. A war just ended and they want to be in a strong bargaining position, even if it means making nice.”

He knows these things, grasps the intelligence of it but the thought of them around her feels revolting, something sitting in the pit of his stomach.

“Are you hurt?” Voice a flutter, a whisper.

The answer he doesn’t give is yes. It’s too vulnerable. Pathetic. Doesn’t remove the thumb from her lip or the fingers from her face, like he could cave in her bones with the strength of his hands.

She could do so in return, crumble him in the way of an old, fragile piece of pottery. Sometimes, in an angry moment, a flash, she thinks of it.

“They’re nothing to me,” she soothes. He feels every syllable. “They look at me like jewelry. Like an object. They aren’t good men.” She steps toward him, eyelashes adorned with something to give them bounce and he realizes there’s color on her lips, vibrant and she’s painting it on his finger with every lovely word.

An ache, the moment he realizes it’s just him with her. An ache, the moment he realizes they had the chance to look too.

“But you know, all I’ve wanted . . .” Trails off, and her fingers wind themselves into his shirt and it’s also so quick that she does this, derails him from his senses and thrashes his heartbeat and they circle something erratic and thrilling and dangerous. She begins again. “I thought of you looking at me, Sasuke-kun.”

They try to be gentle; it’s difficult when they’re desperate. A rib out of place screams in protest as she yanks him to her so hard that if he wasn’t used to it, she would knock the wind out of him. It’s irrelevant, though. Bones go back. He deepens the kiss and clamps her to him, and a groan escapes his lips as she pulls away. They’re tumescent and full, mussed with blotchy color.

“Come with me.” Tugs on his shirt like she’s toppling, and he’s the only thing rooting her to the earth. As children, he would think twice before falling in to step behind anyone; now it’s all he ever seems to do, a spell he always abides.

They’re in the corridor; she leads him, leaving him incoherent and thinking on where she’s gone. Departing in mutual weakness, culminating in the end of the world, and returning to a hurricane.

Always in the eye of her, some complicated but honest peace.

Hears her heels marching with some dignified purpose, aggressive against the tile, but her breathing is ragged.

“Sakura-san!”

A wisp of a nurse comes running up to her, and Sakura rearranges her features into a smile. Trying to quell the breaths, the rabbit heartbeat.

“Sorry to bother you,” she says, quiet. Glances at Sasuke, hands Sakura a pen. “I just need your sign-off for this. I know you’ve been busy all day—”

“Happy to. It’s my job.”

The nurse’s mouth falls open a little as she gets a better look at Sasuke’s face. Wondering what he must look like to warrant it.

He feels the nurse’s eyes follow them as they leave.

Sakura takes the corner sharp and fast, and comes to a stop in front of a closet.

He stares at it, then at her. Opening the door, stands to the side and when he pauses, she gives him a little push in the small of his back so he goes in first. Confusion settles in as she pulls the door shut and they’re thrown into darkness; she flips on a light and before he can ask what she’s doing, his throat runs dry as she wedges a chair underneath the doorknob.

Stands. Stares at him, eyes bright, the red in the high points of her face reflective of the red in her earrings, her dress. In her shoes, she’s a little closer to looking him the eye. A searing, frenzied expression. When she speaks, he’s reeled in by the fraying quality in her voice, the something that’s never articulated, simultaneously coming to terms with the fact that the blow to his head may have rendered him an idiot.

In a low voice, he takes the measure. “Are you all right?”

“My office,” she says, “isn’t safe. I want—I need—”

The words stammer out; she’s having trouble asking.

She swallows hard, once. “I-I have fifteen minutes.”

The color in her face flushes everywhere; across her collarbones, to the tips of her ears. Stares at him, teeth scraping her swollen bottom lip again. Too slow and too late he realizes she’s challenging him, _telling him_ , and the fingers of his hand start on his own shirt buttons, making short work of them. Her bright eyes watch as he does, deft and never slipping, begging in silence for him to do that to her instead.

A step. She shrugs out of her white coat, tosses it to the side.

Raises her hands to the base of her neck.

“No.”

Pausing, Sakura looks momentarily stymied. Framed in the light, shadows thrown across her collarbones and neck with the tips of pink locks tickling, scraping against her hot skin. Another step closer, and now his heavy breath invades her space. Holds her fingers from both hands in one of his, squeezing them.

“Leave it.”

“What—”

“Quiet.”

So she is. Eyes dancing at the command, luxuriating in it. She asks no more questions, shivering from adrenaline and desire as every step he takes toward her means another one back. Back, back. Until her shoulders and heels hit the wall.

And this time he kisses her first, always crushing and hot and consuming, her hands clinging to his back, the cords of muscle underneath his shirt, febrile from his fights and his training, whatever he calls the ways he chooses to hurt himself. Thinks of being crushed and pinned beneath them, equally appalling and arduous obsessions. Suffocated. He’s hard against her and she’s melting, can’t remember exactly where or who she is. She feels the sleeves and bandages and all the layers he wears to keep out whatever he hates so much, whatever hurts him to touch. She’s the only one that gets to unravel them each time.

“How long?” he asks. Hitting her deep, making her weak.

“Twelve minutes, maybe?” Her voice, in contrast, is small and fuzzy at the edges. And his mouth is on her neck, lips burning, spreading the red rich color from her mouth to him and back to her again, unfurling starkly against her pale skin.

When his fingers land on the hem of her dress and then move swiftly between her legs, her knees buckle without warning, a moan torn from her throat that she pours into his.

“Shh.” An admonishment, a command. Heartbeat skipping without pause, notes flooding into one smooth and sustained high. Tilts her hips, one hand fisting itself in his hair and the other on his wrist, but she’ll never in a thousand years ask him to stop.

Because he’s perfect at it, like everything.

His fingers sink into her easily and without warning, and the noise that comes from her is strangled, primal; for it he earns her fingernails raking across his scalp and a drawn, wounded moan. So often he loses it along with her, but this time he’s focused, indignant.

 _You’re mine._ Doesn’t know he said it out loud until she whines again and every muscle clenches around him, her hips twitching and riding agonizingly slow. Knees weak.

He pulls back. The eyes, the lips, the glaze of arousal transforming her face. Her breath catches and tumbles out like a note of pain, chest shuddering. Staring back, she sees the glitter in his eyes, deep and dark and something dangerous that she almost falls apart, crests the wave right then and there. It would be so easy.

He shifts so fast she startles; his hand runs down the curve of her back, then the back of her thigh. Breathing hard against her collarbone, hot heat travels down her sternum and stomach, the high bridge of his nose and his teeth nipping and catching at the knit of the red dress until she realizes what he’s doing. His knees hit the floor. As his shoulder dips and wedges underneath her thigh and her hands tangle in his hair and try to slow him down—

“Sasuke-kun!”

“Shh.”

“Please—”

“Shut up.”

The command is a shockwave of pleasure, tingling at the scalp and skittering down her spine. Feels fabric dragging down her thigh. There’s a soft sound as she slaps the back of her hand against her mouth and tries to muffle the cry, whispering against her hot skin.

He speaks it against her; every syllable is a gift.

“Don’t make a sound.”

A bearded man casts a glance at the utility closet door, frowning as he responds to his companion. “You think she’s losing her grip?”

The other man refrains from answering immediately. Opposite the closet hallside are wide windows, and his eyes follow a hopping bird on the sill instead. “Just things I’ve heard. Some consolidate their reign after wars like that. Others, well, it’s an unhinging. A loosening.”

Their decoration, their embellishments betray their status. Only a handful would feel comfortable trying to corral or herd them. Honored guests; deceitful profiteers.

The response is a snort. “She’s not a weak Hokage by any measure.”

“It’s not about weakness.” Taps on the glass, trying to catch the attention of the feathered, popping creature. “It’s about _optics._ The resistance faction; the attack in the hospital. Mass graves and empty, burned villages across the plains. And,” and here he turns on his heel, lowering his voice another octave, eyes steely and harrowingly cold, “a team of children that flout authority.”

“They’re young. Hotheaded. Terrifyingly talented. The Leaf village has always produced teams of this sort. It’s certainly not a new paradigm.” Tilting his head at the door, he sighs and turns to gaze out the window after him.

“It stirs the blood of civilians, casts aspersions on them. They’re reckless. Drama abounds.”

“If I didn’t know better,” he murmurs, stroking the end of his beard, “I’d wager you’re hoping for some.”

A throaty, jovial laugh, or at least an unfriendly attempt at one. “Would I be angry if the balance of power shifted in a better direction? Certainly not.”

“We just skirted around one potential world-ending conflict; you want another? I’d call you a greedy man.”

“But?”

A heavy pause. He doesn’t specify anything further. The man near the window looks over his shoulder and also stares at the utility closet for a few seconds, sinking into thought.

“Two unnecessarily influential children in love with a friend – in love with a traitor. An emotional, defective traitor. It’s a glaring weak spot in the training and handling of their shinobi. It says a lot.”

A long pause stretches, uncomfortably so. “They’re going to be famous; hell, they already are. I don’t know why you would want to be on the wrong side of them.”

“They should be _managed._ Preferably sooner rather than later, while the insurrection gains steam.”

Another pregnant pause. “So you know about this? The uprisings?”

“History’s always written by the victors,” he says, each syllable slow. The glitter in his eyes seems akin to stirring madness. “Perhaps people are sick of paying tribute.”

Now the original speaker sounds disgusted, irritated, and turns on his heel to stalk down the corridor. Over his shoulder, he responds, “I’m done. These thoughts are veering into the realm of treason.” Pauses at the turn of the hallway. “If you don’t like the new world, you might want to keep it quiet.”

The bird flits away, swooping into the wind. Watching it go, he stands for another few seconds before following his companion.

Around the other corner, Kiba and Hinata start down the same hallway the men left. Kiba has eyes on them as they lean close to one another, heads inclined as they seem to resume a heavy conversation. He growls low and shakes his head.

“I don’t like the looks of them.”

“They’re visitors, I heard. Important ones, Kiba-kun.”

“Hmph. We’ve had a lot of those latel—”

The door to the utility closet swings open and Sakura and Sasuke stumble out, red, breathing hard and tangled up in one another; she’s yanking her coat back on with one hand, a broom gripped in the other, while Sasuke struggles to unravel a loose piece of unidentified tubing from around his neck, shrugging back into a shirt at the same time.

Sakura’s head whips around in the direction the men left, a flutter of panic in her eyes. Turns back to meet Sasuke’s gaze, and they know what they’ve heard.

Kiba’s chuckle lingers on the first letter, and he interrupts the moment in a long, lascivious, “Woooow.”

Hinata looks out the window, a hand hovering over her eyes as if there’s some bright sun.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Sakura says, stamping her foot. “What are you doing here?”

“Seriously? Me? Okay, this,” he nods at the broom handle gripped in her hand, raises his eyebrows, “looks unspeakably degenerate.”

Now he looks at Sasuke, who crushes something deep into his pocket, glowering. Passes the back of his hand over his mouth, jaw set hard.

“The real question is, what does a guy have to do around here to get that type of treatment during a physical?”

Sakura lets out a scream of a laugh, trying to smother it as Sasuke smoothly tells him to shut the fuck up. Sakura waves a hand at him, stepping toward Kiba.

“Kiba, seriously, did you see—”

“You two!”

At the end of the corridor, Tsunade in her familiar, no-nonsense pose, one arm folded underneath her chest and the other supporting her beckoning, manicured finger. “Let’s go.”

Without waiting for them to agree, she spins on her heel and departs.

Sakura’s rubbing her lips, trying to remove the rest of her lipstick – not that there’s much left.

“You two,” Kiba drawls, “always in trouble.”

Sasuke shoulders him hard as he passes, and Sakura elbows him in the side, but neither of them can disagree.


End file.
